A moment of silence.
Then, “Feel better?”
“Kind of,” I said. Because, oddly enough, I did.
“Good. Okay, ready for my secret?”
“It better be good, Mayne. I don’t have time for petty bullshit. I want something hard-core.”
“Oh, it’s good.”
“I’ll be the judge of that.”
“When I was in third grade, I had a crush on my teacher, Mr. Mitchum. I used to draw hearts on my paper with our initials in the middle. On the last day of school, I told him that when I graduated high school, I’d come back for him and we could run away together and get married.”
I refused to find that adorable. “Oh my god, that’s adorable.” I apparently didn’t refuse very hard. “Please tell me you saw him again when you were older and he made fun of you.” I paused, considering. And then, in a more horrified voice, “Or you went back and actually had sex with him. You went back and fucked him, didn’t you. Jesus Christ, Darren.”
“I don’t have sex with everything, Sandy.”
“Almost!”
“And no, I didn’t see him after that. But only because he was fired and went to prison my freshman year.”
“What? Why!”
“Apparently he was having sex with a guy in the grade above me. He was sixteen, I think.”
“What?”
“I know, right? If only he’d waited one more year, it could have been me.”
I choked. “Did you just make an underage sex joke?”
“Yes, yes I did.”
“Oh my god.”
“I don’t even feel ashamed. Should I feel ashamed? Wow. I really don’t feel ashamed. That’s probably not good.”
“Oh my god.”
“Okay,” he said cheerfully. “Your turn.”
“I don’t have anything to top that.”
“It’s a good thing we’re not topping each other, then.” And then his voice dropped and he said, “At least not yet.”
I dropped the phone, because what.
It clattered to the floor and I gave very real thought to just stepping on it as hard as I could to shatter it to pieces so I could resolutely avoid thinking about topping anything having to do with Darren.
(Though, Helena found it to be a fine idea, because of the miles and miles of tanned skin that could be stretched out before her as she fucked up into him, nails digging into his thighs, her mouth latched on to one of his nipples as he writhed above her asking for more, begging for more—)
I picked the phone back up.
He was laughing at me.
Avoid. Avoid. Avoid.